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Decisions, decisions.
Beyond who they will select with the sixth overall pick in the NHL entry draft on Friday night in Dallas, the Detroit Red Wings are facing a multitude of decisions as they get ready to do the bulk of their offseason work over the next month or so.
Let’s look at some of the choices facing the Wings.
Green With Opportunity
This isn’t as much as choice for Detroit as it is for impending unrestricted free agent defenseman Mike Green. He’s been a Red Wing for the past three seasons, and the Wings made it abundantly clear a while back that they’d like to keep him in the fold, tabling an offer to Green not long after the NHL trade deadline passed and he wasn’t moved to another team.
Green hasn’t jumped on the offer, though. He’s 33 and has yet to win a Stanley Cup, and that certainly figures to weigh heavily into his decision. It would appear that at the very least he’s going to wait until July 1 and see what the market has to offer him.
Losing Green would prove costly, because there’s not much out there this summer in terms of available UFA defensemen. The Wings won’t have a shot at Washington’s John Carlson, and beyond him the class of 2018 includes the likes of Jack Johnson, Calvin de Haan, John Moore, Thomas Hickey and Roman Polak.
Will Ya, Ilya?
The Wings are one of those teams kicking the tires hard on UFA forward Ilya Kovalchuk, who is looking for an NHL return after five seasons in the KHL.
On the one hand, the attraction is obvious for the goal-starved Red Wings. Kovalchuk, 35, scored at least 29 goals in 10 of his 12 NHL seasons. That’s why they are willing to pay him a high salary and are offering a two-year pact.
On the other hand, if you’re Kovalchuk, are you coming back to the NHL to suit up for a team with almost no hope of making the playoffs next season?
Plan B to add punch to the Wings’ attack would be an old plan reborn - Thomas Vanek. The Wings liked what he gave them as a UFA two years ago and even at 34, Vanek still figures to be good for around 20 goals.
In Need Of A Good No. 2
Forget those reports you’ve read about the Wings perhaps trading Jimmy Howard. A team source scoffed at the suggestion. Entering the last season of his contract, Howard is their main goaltender going forward, and will likely be offered an extension. Beyond him, though, it’s anyone’s guess.
Petr Mrazek is gone and Grand Rapids goalies Tom McCollum and Jared Coreau are unrestricted free agents who don’t figure in the team’s long-range plans at the NHL level. So who’s going to caddie for Howard?
Well, the guy they’d most like to get their hands on in the UFA goalie pool, Carter Hutton of the St. Louis Blues, will be courted by just about every NHL team in search of a back-up goalie. As much as he’d be a great story in Detroit - Hutton’s first job as a teenager was making pizzas for Little Caesars - at 32, he’ll also be looking to win a Cup and will most certainly land with a contender.
That would leave the Wings to target someone like Anton Khudonin, who’s proven a reliable back-up in both Boston and Carolina.
What About Marty?
The Wings have five forwards who are restricted free agents - Dylan Larkin, Andreas Athanasiou, Anthony Mantha, Tyler Bertuzzi and Martin Frk. Of that group, only Frk isn’t a certainty to be back in the fold next season.
The Wings see Frk as a one-trick pony, and that one trick - his powerful shot - is just too erratic to be counted on consistently.
Frk finished the season with 11 goals on 99 shots, an 11.1 shooting percentage, but he also had 43 missed shots, meaning he failed to hit the target on over 30 percent of the shots he took. That’s a problematic stat for someone they want to work the point on the club’s second power-play unit.
On top of that, Frk scored just one goal in his final 23 games of the season.
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